Johan Hidding's homepage

This is the personal homepage of Johan Hidding. I'm a PHD student
astronomy at the Kapteyn institute at the University of Groningen.
My research interests are: cosmic structure formation, the cosmic
web, (computational) geometry. In particular I study the Zel'dovich
and Adhesion approximations to the formation of the Cosmic Web.
My main collaborators are:
Rien van de Weijgaert (promotor),
Sergei Shandarin,
Gert Vegter, and
Bernard J.T. Jones.
On this page you can find several things either having to do with
astronomy or not.

Adhesion model & Computational geometry

In this movie I show how the adhesion model can be computed using
a weighted Voronoi tessellation.

Zeldovich Approximation in Blender

The equations describing the Zeldovich approximation are identical
to this system in geometric optics. The slab of glass has some minute
deformations, which are made visible with a collumnated beam of light and
a projection screen. As the slab moves upward, the deformations grow and
caustics are formed. This movie was made with Blender and LuxRender.

I've been playing the piano for some time. A few years ago I discovered singing was much more fun.
I'm currently singing tenor in the Bragi a-capella choir, vocal ensemble Cantatrix as well as more irregular
projects that cross my path.

Programming

Allthough I do most of my programming in C++ and Python, I've a
dilletante curiosity in more aestheticly pleasing languages like Scheme. At the moment I'm
also learning the ins and outs of D, supposed to be C++'s
successor. If you have ever done serious C++ coding the way its
meant (using STL containers, iterators, standard algorithms and
templates) you will know the kind of frustrations that drove people
to design D. Recently a majority of C++0x features are supported by
the latest GCC compilers, giving some of the power of scheme to C++.

Python Everything you need to start
programming Python is here. The language, tutorials and documentation. Python
is the easiest, most powerfull and most readable language I have ever used.
This has two good reasons: it has a huge standard library (batteries
included) and indentation is a syntax element which forces you to write
readable code.